


the beasts of the forest

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-28 17:15:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20429567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Tell me a story, she says: so Jaime does.





	the beasts of the forest

**Author's Note:**

> written, ahhhh mid-August 2019

Go away inside yourself, he’d told her, and maybe she did and maybe she didn’t but she came back being dragged under her arms, and as they tied up her up again she slipped into unconsciousness.

Now and then she moaned and he whispered her name. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

It rained and it stopped raining and then she finally, finally opened her eyes. Thank the gods, every one of them, she opened her eyes. “Brienne.”

She didn’t answer.

“Brienne, answer me.”

She spit blood. Most of it landed on her own clothes. 

“Wench.”

“Brienne,” she whispered, slurring the sounds. Her mouth was swollen and split and her cheek —

“What did ... what happened?”

She met his gaze and didn’t answer.

He had hoped for mercy. He said, sick and furious: “I told you what to do.”

“You told me to give in.”

“I told you —“ To be safe. To protect herself, protect her mind, because there was nothing else she could hold inviolate. “I told you to survive.”

“I’m here,” she said.

Jaime shut his eyes. 

He was here, too.

He was so tired of being tied to things, so tired of rain on his face and lice in his hair and water for breakfast and water for lunch and never, never seeing Cersei or Tyrion or (gods help him) even his father, even Tywin would be a grateful sight right now.

His children had probably forgotten his voice, his face.

He wondered if Tommen had a new kitten. 

He wondered if Joffrey had cut it open.

Cersei, he thought, aching. Father, come find me.

“Jaime?”

“Wench,” hauling open his eyes. It hurt. Everything hurt, and he’d only fallen off a horse and been kicked in the ribs and slept on the ground for a week and

“Tell me a story,” said the woman.

“I don’t know any stories.”

“My father told me ... stories. At bedtime, and when I was sick. Didn’t you tell any to your children when they were small?”

“My — who?”

“Jaime.”

He took a deep breath. “Cersei, she .... I never did.” What could she possibly want him to say?

When I was sick, he thought. When I was sad. When I jumped off the cliffs to impress Cersei and she screamed and the guard heard and Father had me whipped and — “Do you know what I thought when we first met?”

“You thought I was a man.”

“After that.” She pushed him in a boat and climbed in herself and rowed, her thighs only a few inches from his face, and he had thought very seriously about beating her to death with the oar but instead there she was, dripping, her clothes clinging even more tightly to her hips, her legs ... “I noticed you.”

“Of course you did. No one else was around.”

“Wench, I’m telling the story.”

She had hauled him across fields and streams and watched while he pissed, and ... “You stopped to bury those women and when we were caught, you killed three men before I could blink. It was ... quite nice work.”

It was more than nice. It was extraordinary. He’d seen celebrated swordsmen who didn’t do so well. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could do as well.

And it made him ... it made him ...

He couldn’t tell her that.

But he looked at her, a few feet away, beaten to an inch of her life and — what else? He couldn’t ask what happened. He wouldn’t.

So he took the story in a different direction. “It was beautiful. It was sensual. You made me burn for you.”

She made an offended noise.

“Shush. I’m telling you a story. It’s about ... about a brave knight and a wretched, dirty cuss. It’s about what should have happened.”

What would he have done differently? Aside from not be captured in the first place. “I should have kissed you, that night.”

“Jaime _Lannister_.”

“I kiss you,” he said, “that night. Maybe you hit me. I don’t care. I kiss you again and you hit me again and this time I fall over, Brienne, and I pull you down on top of me when I go.”

He could see her eyes, bright.

“You’re furious — you’re always furious with me, aren’t you? but I keep kissing you and it isn’t long before you start to kiss me back.

“It’s good. It’s so good. You taste like honey and wine and —“

He was describing Cersei.

“— and — and dirt. You taste like dirt, Brienne, and sweat.” Like he was sparring, like she bested him and shamed him, kept at him til his muscles burned and sweat ran into his eyes so fast he couldn’t see, couldn’t clean it, and then she hit him again and he was on the ground and eating grass, angry and happy and aroused.

He licked his mouth. “You’re hot for me. And I want you, too. I used to think ... I used to keep myself back from things like this. Never went with women, when they offered. Before I knew you. This thing between us isn’t only how you look — how you look at me — or how you move. You know that. It’s you, specifically. You.”

He shifted against the ropes. “I should have kissed you every day. We should have been together all this time. Going to Kings Landing maybe, I’ll still be on a rope if you like that, but we’d share a bed at night. In pleasure.”

It seemed almost cruelty to speak of this — but she’s listening, still — so —

“Have you tried it on your own body? Of course you have, you’re no timid maiden. You know what you want. I could do it to you the same way. And better, too.

“In the morning there’d be nothing to be ashamed over. There isn’t anything between us to fear or worry or fuss at, is there? It’s like breathing. Like wanting sleep when you’re tired, wanting bread when you’re hungry. I want you like that. We’d be that for one another. We know the words already. _I am hers and she is mine. _We could stand up in a sept and say them, or say them right here, or never at all. It doesn’t take words to make this true. All the septons in the world can’t give it, and all the violence in the world can’t break it, and you’ve known it, you know that...”

Something caught the light on her face — shone a second — and dimmed as it dried. 

She said: “It’s a nice story.”

“It’s not a _story_.”

“My father told me about wild beasts in the forests. Ready to eat disobedient girls.” Her speech had worsened, the bruises continuing to swell.

“Don’t say that. Don’t talk about that.”

“My mother said the beasts were all gone but I knew better. Father wouldn’t lie. I knew they weren’t only a story.”

“_Brienne” — _but her eyes were shut now and they did not reopen. She was done listening to him.

**Author's Note:**

> book or show, this scene breaks my heart. oh those children.


End file.
